British judges and their love affair with judicial wigs It ’s always been a paradox to me: Why do members of two of the most respected professions – the clergy and the judiciary – have such an absurd dress code? Even the men perform their duties...
Not long after Jack the Ripper terrorized Whitechapel, another serial murderer stalked Ohio. The press dubbed this new killer “Jack the Strangler.” When a University of Dayton criminal justice instructor discovered his great-aunt was one of the...
Real quick now – can you name the hallmarks of a vampire? Pointed fangs, red eyes, a thirst for blood, and a fear of crucifixes? Did you think of the hairy hand, too? Hair on the palm of the hand is one of the lesser-known signs in vampire folklore...
How far back in time can a cadaver dog’s nose go? Twenty years? A hundred? Some dogs work as archaeology dogs, and the age of the graves they can detect might surprise you. Cadaver dogs have successfully sniffed out Civil War and Revolutionary War...
Undercover Female Detectives Men can do some things better than women. It’s no different in the world of undercover investigation. Men’s strength and ability to infiltrate male society makes men uniquely suited for certain undercover tasks...
The top ten: After one and a half years of blogging about historical crime cases, the New Year offers a great opportunity to look back at crimes that fascinated my readers the most. These were the most popular: 1. New Discoveries about the Lincoln...
Manifest Destiny It’s impossible to read a history book covering the two decades preceding the Civil War without encountering this phrase. And for good reason: Manifest Destiny shaped American politics in the 1840s and propelled the United States...
Animal Thieves in Germany Not another shoe gone! Where two sneakers had been sitting on the back patio the night before, now there was only one. In 2009, the people of Föhren, Germany were scratching their heads about a spate of strange thefts...
No history of a war is complete if it focuses solely on men. Women’s experiences, at home and on the battlefield, shaped the postbellum world. Women, perhaps more than men, held society together during the war and rebuilt it afterwards. Giselle...
Mystery of the Poe Toaster A man wearing a black coat, wide-brimmed hat, and scarf around his face stepped out of Baltimore’s midnight shadows. He passed into Westminster Cemetery, approached Edgar Allan Poe’s grave, and set three red roses and a...
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